Jammu: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has stayed a government order according sanction to the prosecution of a police officer accused in twin killings at Khanabal area of south Kashmir’s Anantnag district in 2010.
“In view of the submissions and in the facts of the case, it is directed that the operation and effect of the order granting sanction is stayed, till next date of hearing,” said a division bench of the high court comprising Justices Alok Aradhe and Sanjeev Kumar.
State’s home department headed by Chief minister Mehbooba Mufti last October gave sanction for the prosecution of deputy superintendent of police Noor-ul-Hassan Parray for his alleged role in the killing of two persons in firing at Khanabal in 2010. Parray has challenged the order on various counts, particularly on the fact that two FIRs can’t be lodged for single incident and that in the first FIR, CRPF and not police has been blamed.
The order said that that a probe into the incident had revealed that a case under section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the RPC (Ranbir Penal Code) could be made out against Parray.
Bilal Ahmad Najjar and Noor-ul-Amin Dagga were killed in firing by government on September 18, 2010 when they were waiting near a mosque at K P Road in Anantnag’s Khanabal area to join the funeral of Maroof Ahmad Nath, who had drowned in the river Jehlum on September 15 after the forces allegedly chased some boys who were staging a protest.
Families of the victims and eyewitnesses maintain that the two were killed in unprovoked police firing.